Luca Comai is professor of Plant Biology at the Genome Center of the University of California at Davis. He has B.S. equivalent from the Universita’ di Bologna, Italy, and a Ph.D. in plant pathology from UC Davis. In his career, he has worked on bacterial plasmid genetics, plant biotechnology (glyphosate resistance via alteration of EPSP synthase), and genetics and genomics of polyploidy. He co-developed TILLING, a method to identify targeted mutations. Since joining UC Davis in 2006, he has focused on function and regulation of chromosomes in polyploid genomes and on stress-induced genome instability. Dr. Comai teaches the foundation genetics course at UCD using a flipped approach. He has authored over 130 publications, has an H impact factor of 69, is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. In 2017 he received the ASPB Innovation Prize for Agricultural Technology.